Very little time has passed since the last couple walked by the "Healthy Chinese Food" food cart. It's a masquerade ball in the medical school. And this is the only food cart. The owner is a Chinese woman in her late forties, possibly early fifties, hard to tell even for Chinese people how old Chinese people are, always seeming younger than they really are. Her face, as all those who frequent her cart during the day know, has just two expressions, a blank one and a smiling one. The customers always see the smiling one when they stand in front of her cart, often in a long line, waiting for the cheap, healthy, and fast Chinese food. Sometimes she is helped by presumably her husband, but most often she is alone, cranking out containers of noodle soups or fried noodles or rice or something. On the left side of her cart is the menu, which, over the years, has transformed to more and more professional and sophisticated. Next thing you know, it might be animated. It's a sign that her hard work has been paying off, and yet, she never went beyond the cart, the Healthy Chinese Food cart of the medical school.
Tonight was her first venture into the night business. Over the years she had learned that there was an annual spring masquerade ball taking place here, with the same customers showing up in gallant costumes and beautiful masks. She can't recognize any of them, especially under the one mercury vapor light that stands quietly in front of her. But she is taking a risk only in terms of her own efforts, energy, and a little time away from the family, of which no one knows about, not even the Chinese doctors and researchers who speak to her in her language. She sits on her fold out stool and watch the revelers go by. She doesn't understand what a masquerade is here, in this country. She has never been to one, not here, obviously, and not anywhere. She is curious about why people hide behind a mask to have fun.
